[HN Gopher] North Paw
___________________________________________________________________
North Paw
Author : noja
Score : 207 points
Date : 2022-10-17 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sensebridge.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (sensebridge.net)
| soperj wrote:
| I remember reading about how certain languages didn't have words
| for left & right, but used cardinal directions instead(0), and
| always wondered how they have an intuitive sense of where north
| is just to make themselves clear. It would certainly help to have
| it though.
|
| (0) - ie: HokeyPokey would be a line of kids standing in a
| certain direction - you put your north foot in, you take your
| north foot out, you put your south foot in.. etc
| ZetaZero wrote:
| Some places have geographic features that make the cardinals
| easy. Like in Denver, the mountains are always west.
| irrational wrote:
| The two main ways are based on geographical landmarks (west is
| towards the ocean, south is towards the desert, north is
| downriver, etc.) and the other is based on the sun/moon. East
| is the direction the sun/moon rises and west is the direction
| the sun/moon sets. One of the fascinating things I learned
| about antiquity is they would often orient their maps so east
| (the direction of the rising sun) was at the top of the map.
| They didn't have magnetic compasses so there wasn't anything
| special about north to cause them to orient their maps in that
| direction.
| paxys wrote:
| Cool idea, but at that price point I'd expect a smart watch or
| band rather than a bulky house-arrest ankle monitor.
| writeslowly wrote:
| Would you actually need to have the vibrating motors correspond
| to north to make it work? I assume that your mind would
| eventually map things even if it was motors vibrating at
| different fingertips or something else that didn't easily
| correspond to compass directions, as long as it was consistent.
| mabbo wrote:
| > As you might have guessed by the long period with no posting,
| Sensebridge is out of business. We've been out of stock on
| Northpaw Kits since late 2016; we do not have plans to make more
| kits.
| maliker wrote:
| I wonder if any smart watch apps can reliably achieve something
| similar. I looked briefly for an Apple watch app that did it
| but no luck.
| noja wrote:
| I found several iPhone apps: -
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/talk-compass/id1540530352 (has
| speech prompts, works while screen is locked) -
| https://apps.apple.com/qa/app/talking-compass/id1476144391
| (speech prompts did not work for me) -
| https://apps.apple.com/de/app/blind-compass/id1546647415 (did
| not work while screen is locked)
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| My Garmin contains a magnetic compass and can display your
| ABCs (altitude, barometer, compass) on the watchface or
| widget.
|
| You can also query the compass using the API:
|
| https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/sdk/
|
| and issue alerts using the built-in vibration motor; it would
| be pretty easy to build a Connect app to do this.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| It seems like it would be trivial to write an app that would
| vibrate the watch every once in a while, with the frequency
| of vibration inversely proportional to how far you were from
| magnetic north, but this would no doubt be a pretty big
| battery drain.
| dfc wrote:
| I don't think it is a question of how far you are from
| magnetic north. The north paw device helped people identify
| where magnetic north is relative to your current heading.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| I am pretty sure by "how far from" he meant the delta of
| magnetic north to heading angle. Since an Apple watch
| doesn't have the ability to vibrate any where except the
| watch body it can't "point" at magnetic north like the
| North paw does, it would have to indicate magnetic north
| some other way.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Yes, this was my (clumsy) intention, 'far' in the sense
| of angular deviation. The thing about our analog brains
| is that we are very good at processing signals that vary
| proportionally to some quantity but not very good at
| internalizing 'limit switch' type signals.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Thinking about it the ankle is a pretty clever Place. My
| wrists are very often in different orientations to my body,
| but my ankles are more or less always in line with the way
| I'm facing.
| usgroup wrote:
| Belt is better still by the same arc of reason.
| kelnos wrote:
| Downside of a belt is that you have a much longer way
| around your body, which means longer wires, and perhaps
| an easier chance of breaking something. A belt also
| implies pants that can accept a belt, which probably
| wouldn't work for a lot of people, at least not every day
| with every type/style/color of clothing.
|
| The anklet is reasonably unobtrusive, and unless you are
| wearing form-fitting pants, you can keep it under your
| pants leg to keep it out of sight. Even if you're wearing
| tighter pants, shorts, or a skirt, and you don't mind the
| under-house-arrest tracker vibe, it's still wearable, and
| might make for a fun conversation topic.
|
| Agreed that the belt is better from the standpoint of
| what the device is for, but I think the anklet is a bit
| more practical. I know I would definitely wear it more
| often (more or less all the time), but I could not say
| the same about a belt.
| lucasgonze wrote:
| Underpants. Northpaw Underpants.
| ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote:
| Based on the interest around the recent chess cheating
| rumors I'd suggest an insertable version: The North Paw
| Grandmaster.
| [deleted]
| kelnos wrote:
| On their downloads page[0] it looks like they have CAD files
| for the board and a BOM for the components. Probably wouldn't
| be too hard (or expensive) to have a few boards fabricated by
| PCBWay or OSHPark. I imagine the enclosure could be 3D printed,
| though I don't see any CAD files for that. And not sure how
| easy it'd be to source the other components, especially with
| all the component shortages these days. But I imagine it'd be
| possible to resurrect the project, and given that they're not
| in business anymore, they might be willing to share more
| information with anyone interested (like CAD files for the
| enclosure, or specifics on where they sourced the components).
|
| [0] https://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/northpaw-
| downloads...
| googlryas wrote:
| I thought about building something like this about 20 years ago,
| but decided not to.This is actually a skill you can teach
| yourself if you just start paying attention. It works pretty much
| everywhere except for in labyrinth-like buildings. The last time
| I couldn't figure out which Way North was was in Lord Leicester
| hotel in warwick 5 years ago.
| ok_dad wrote:
| You can teach yourself a lot of "sixth senses" if you try hard
| enough!
|
| When I was in the Navy as an Officer of the Deck (OOD), I used
| to be able to visually measure distances on flat water in the
| range of ~500 yards to a mile within a few tens of yards
| because I had an internal sense of how big objects were and how
| they would look at those ranges. This was because I constantly
| had to measure ranges on radars and via moboards[0] when I was
| a OOD-in-training and so I learned quickly how to measure
| distances visually.
|
| I also learned how to estimate how a ship was moving in ports
| and transit canals and how to adjust that using engines simply
| by looking around, much like you can adjust how you walk on a
| surface depending on senses from your whole body about what
| type of surface it is, how stable it is, etc. On gravel, most
| people can sense a bit of slippage as they walk from their
| feet, they might sense their body alignment from feet to head
| moving slightly due to that slippage, etc. and all those senses
| are used to tell "I need to slow down here" or whatever. For
| ships, you get an idea for what direction the bow and stern are
| moving, how they relate to your control angles, how that
| relates to what you see around you, and also integrates your
| body senses, because your body is a finely-tuned acceleration
| sensing machine.
|
| Anyways, I wish I were still an OOD today, because I would try
| and create some tools like this that would help me there. Even
| this anklet itself would have been helpful when I was on duty,
| to tell me when the helmsman was asleep!
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_board
| kelnos wrote:
| Whoa, this is really cool!
|
| > _For ships, you get an idea for what direction the bow and
| stern are moving_
|
| I wouldn't've thought of this, but of course that's critical
| to know on a ship. And it's certainly something outside of
| standard human experience, since we're small enough in that
| dimension to not have to worry about the difference in
| movement between our front and rear sides. The fact that you
| were able to gain an intuitive feel for this highlights how
| adaptable the human brain is.
| roughly wrote:
| During the daytime, if you know roughly what time it is and
| roughly where the sun is, that's good enough to give you close
| enough to the cardinal directions for most purposes not
| involving a 10mi trek out of the woods.
| xcskier56 wrote:
| I have always had a very strong internal sense of direction and
| I've found that it relies strongly on knowing which way is
| north. This means that when I'm in a mall or other large
| building (malls are the worst) I get very lost and have to
| think hard about which way is which. I usually have to paint a
| birds eye view and know which stores are on which corner of the
| mall and orient myself that way. This also means that
| occasionally when I'm in a new city, I get north/south mixed up
| and am hopelessly lost
| aleken wrote:
| Agree with this guy. Never tried Lord Leicester hotel in
| Warwick though, but looks like it's too late. Shut down.
| googlryas wrote:
| Yeah, it's condos now:( very interesting building though -
| built around 1650 and was expanded/modified every 50 years or
| so for the past 450 years. Absolute maze to navigate,
| especially because "perpendicular" hallways might actually be
| at 80 degrees or so.
| omnibrain wrote:
| That's exactly what f**s you up when you try to navigate
| Karlsruhe in Germany.
|
| It's a planned city, but not with a grid, instead it's fan-
| shaped, even more pronounced than Versailles.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| I'm not sure if I have an intuition for which way the compass
| directions are due to nature or nurture. I was encouraged to
| think about it from an early age, but that doesn't prove I
| wouldn't have just had that kind of intuition anyway.
|
| It's a useful nano superpower, though. It's quite often that I
| use it to pick the right direction to head without having to
| get out a map on my phone, or other such cheat.
|
| As the parent comment mentions, there are times when it is
| tricky. I often emerge from one of several exits from an
| unfamiliar London Underground station and have to spend a few
| minutes orientating myself. Often the fastest way is to just
| look for one of those maps they put in glass cabinets and
| figure it out from the shape of the road junctions.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| This is a pretty old product and idk if they are still being
| sold, despite that page. I wonder if the thread title should
| include a date, and what it should be. It would be at least 5
| years back.
| maliker wrote:
| Every time I read about folks surgically implanting stuff like
| this [1] I think... surely just wearing it would be better?
|
| [1] https://www.surfacemag.com/articles/north-sense-
| cybernetic-i...
| wanderingstan wrote:
| Back in 2005 my university built this as a belt and ran several
| studies on it over the following decade.[1]
|
| It morphed into a product for the visually impaired and is still
| available today. [2]
|
| [1]
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C34&q=fee...
| [2] https://feelspace.de/en/
| hidelooktropic wrote:
| This is one of those things that I would love to have while at
| the same time know most people I know would be befuddled as to
| why I'd want such a thing.
| isaacdl wrote:
| I own one of these - bought it pre-made years ago rather than
| assembling the kit myself. It's a ton of fun, and really does
| give me a more-intuitive sense of direction. After wearing it for
| a while around places I go to regularly, I keep that intuitive
| sense of direction without having to wear it.
|
| I've mostly stopped wearing it though, because it looks a lot
| like a GPS-based parole-monitoring device, and I got tired of
| questions/comments :)
| permo-w wrote:
| does the intuitive sense go wrong when you go to a different
| part of the world? how does that work out?
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Not OP, but I've traveled a lot, and it takes me a few days
| to adapt to the new surroundings. I can't consciously point
| to what it is that my brain is locking on to, but I can feel
| 'it' click on, and then I can trust my sense of direction,
| like I normally do. Before 'it', I can get turned around much
| more easily than normal.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| You never said "you wouldn't want to know why..." ?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > Because of the plasticity of the brain, it has been shown
| that most wearers gain a new sense of absolute direction,
| giving them a superhuman ability to navigate their
| surroundings.
|
| So you would say that this quote isn't exaggeration?
| hammock wrote:
| I have what you might describe as a "spidey sense" about
| whether a photo depicting a North American coastal scene is
| on the Atlantic, the Pacific, or something else like Lake
| Erie. You might have this feeling also.
|
| I suspect it comes from an innate, unconscious comprehension
| of the highlights and the shadows (since the sun will
| typically be in the south). And I don't mean the obvious
| shadows but even the subtle ones.
|
| With practice and perhaps assistance, e.g. North Paw, one
| could learn to harness the association between light and
| direction anywhere, not just near huge bodies of water of
| known direction.
| wartron wrote:
| You should play some https://www.geoguessr.com/
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Georainbolt is an absolute wizard at this.
| wanderingmind wrote:
| In the age of people driving through no entry roads and dirt
| roads because Google Maps showed them that direction, any
| intuitive sense of direction and navigation is definitely
| superhuman in my books.
| isaacdl wrote:
| I wouldn't call it superhuman, but it definitely improves it
| a lot. I think it's helped in general with my sense of
| direction, but it's a lot less noticeable in an unfamiliar
| place (if I'm not wearing it).
|
| If I start in a familiar place, then go into somewhere
| unfamiliar, like a new building, my ability to keep track of
| cardinal directions is significantly better, which helps keep
| me oriented to e.g. find my way out of the building.
| godelski wrote:
| I haven't used a device like this, but I don't think this is
| exaggeration. It is well known in linguistics that speakers
| of languages that use absolute directions are better at
| determining where north is. People that use the chime feature
| on their watches to indicate every hour also tend to have a
| better sense of time. It is also a successful tool for people
| trying to lucid dream (the "reality checks" are similar in
| behavior). We also know that one can become better at spatial
| directions through practice, which is why it is "common"
| advice to drive around when moving to a new city without a
| GPS (until necessary). It helps build that mental map in your
| head (which often generalizes) and tells your brain to pay
| attention to other correlating features (e.g. I wouldn't be
| surprised if this North Paw experiment gave users better
| sense of time with respect to the sun).
|
| It should be no surprise that as one becomes accustomed to
| one's own environment and the way they navigate it.
|
| Though I think the cooler question is if we can build a
| phone/smart-watch app that can do this. Is there a way to
| vibrate the watch in a northernly direction or something like
| vibrating when the user turns north (deceptively tricky).
| MisterTea wrote:
| > and I got tired of questions/comments :)
|
| I'd be very attempted to gruffly retort "murder and
| racketeering charges" and see how fast they stop being curious.
| etrautmann wrote:
| I'm curious how well oriented you felt before. I currently
| always feel like I can point to north no matter what, so I'm
| wondering if I'd benefit from this or not? I suppose those
| abilities get worse when I'm not in a city with an aligned grid
| or inside a building, like hiking on a trail where you can't
| see the sun. Still, I'm not sure what I'd gain from this and
| curious if there's a next level of awareness to attain.
| dvzk wrote:
| Trail navigation is an overlapping skillset. You learn to
| recognize landmarks, topography, water flow, slopes, shadows,
| horizons, wind direction, and the sun/stars/moon. Maintaining
| an internal compass relative to a fixed location is
| indispensable. If you can do that you should be able to
| crudely reorient after moving blindfolded through
| switchbacks.
| foobarian wrote:
| I'll venture a guess that you played a lot of video games
| with minimaps in your time :-)
| shagie wrote:
| Was it the battery pack? Looking at
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/5579 and
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/1201 it should be fairly
| possible to get to a more reasonable size. As an alternative to
| the leg, having the vibration as something in the collar might
| be an alternative.
|
| One of the "hmm... things to make" is a lidar detector for
| things behind a car that then is mapped to an array of the
| vibration motors that are in the back of a driver's seat - so
| that you could _feel_ a car passing you.
| noja wrote:
| Arduino fw:
| https://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/northpaw-
| downloads...
| TrueGeek wrote:
| I ride a bike with a Garmin radar detector that tells me when
| a car is behind me. Adding a vibration motor to it would be
| neat.
| blamazon wrote:
| Question - why is either of those options better than a
| mirror?
| greycol wrote:
| I would be wary about _replacing_ a mirror and turning
| your head with such a system so its main advantage that
| you don 't need to take your eyes off the oncoming road
| is moot.
|
| As a supplemental system the advantages would include
| redundancy, lack of a blind spot, and better situational
| awareness even when you're not planning to change lanes.
| viggity wrote:
| I drive a Chevy Suburban (6 kids), its a huge car and can be
| hard to see my surroundings. When I'm backing out of a
| parking spot, it will vibrate the left or right side of my
| seat if a car is coming from the appropriate direction. It'll
| also do the same if it senses you're drifting into another
| lane or if you are changing lanes purposefully (blinker on)
| and someone is in my blindspot. It is extremely convenient
| hex4def6 wrote:
| I worked with the guy that designed this gadget (Hi Eric!),
| back in ~2009 or so.
|
| It would be really cool to see another version with smaller
| electronics, flex PCB, etc.
|
| Other features, like connection to a smart phone for waypoint
| navigation would be neat.
| throwup wrote:
| I'd love to see a smaller version too! The GPS-tracking-
| bracelet aesthetic isn't really for me, but I'm still
| intrigued by the idea.
|
| The key components are a compass and motors, and since 2009
| those have been dramatically miniaturized, thanks to the
| smartphone industry. Combine that with flex PCB and I bet you
| could fit everything in the form factor of a slap bracelet.
| sitkack wrote:
| I wonder how well a headband would work.
|
| Having everything integrated into a baseball cap makes the
| most sense.
| bentcorner wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing (as in this resembles a GPS
| ankle-bracelet).
|
| It sounds like the original research used a belt, which to me
| sounds like a more subtle device to wear:
|
| > _The original idea for North Paw comes from research done at
| University of Osnabruck in Germany. In this study, rather than
| an anklet, the researchers used a belt. They wore the belt non-
| stop for six weeks, and reported successive stages of
| integration._
| smnrchrds wrote:
| I feel like a wired belt would raise even more troublesome
| questions. This situation will be more likely with a belt
| than an anklet:
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/radiation-student-raises-fake-bomb-
| ale...
| HardwareLust wrote:
| That is a fascinating project. We were just having a discussion
| about this last week, how some people seem to know intuitively
| what direction is which, and then there's me, where I have no
| freaking idea what direction I'm facing unless I have a watch and
| can see the sun lol.
| antimatter15 wrote:
| I wonder if it'd be possible to build a more compact and power
| efficient version of this using electrostatics on a flexible PCB
| slyrus wrote:
| A slightly modified version of this would be super handy for OTB
| chess games!
| noja wrote:
| Some similar projects: - https://www.wear.works/
| (for blind marathon runners) -
| https://www.carlosterminel.com/wearable-compass (scroll down for
| various pictures) - https://pganssle.github.io/HaptiCap/
| - https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/04/08/this-haptic-compass-belt-
| vibrates-northward-wearablewednesday/ -
| https://makeitbreakitfixit.com/2016/06/22/haptic-compass-band-
| revisited/
| _Microft wrote:
| The indentation prevents the adresses being turned into links.
| Here are links:
|
| https://www.wear.works/ (for blind marathon runners)
|
| https://www.carlosterminel.com/wearable-compass (scroll down
| for various pictures)
|
| https://pganssle.github.io/HaptiCap/
|
| https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/04/08/this-haptic-compass-bel...
|
| https://makeitbreakitfixit.com/2016/06/22/haptic-compass-ban...
| grnmamba wrote:
| It looks like an electronic shackle offenders under house arrest
| get
| staplung wrote:
| IIRC Oliver Sacks was interested in this kind of thing. Think
| there's an episode of Radiolab where he talks about how ho used
| to carry around a couple of extremely strong, oblong magnets in
| his pockets that would stay oriented north even while he moved
| around. He wanted to see if his brain could learn to make sense
| of the input and develop a new sense, akin to the magnetic
| navigation that retain birds have. Not sure if he ever developed
| the new sense but the comments here suggest that he might have
| been able to.
|
| Another fun fact: evidently, one third of Earth's languages (not
| one third of speakers mind you) do not have words for "left" and
| "right" and instead use cardinal terms for everything. Speakers
| of such languages presumably then must know their orientation at
| all times.
| ok_dad wrote:
| In Hawaii people still use "mauka" (towards the mountains) and
| "makai" (towards the ocean) to describe where they are, so you
| might say, "it's on the makai side of downtown," to describe an
| area or, "go mauka from the intersection" to indicate a
| directional vector. They also use "windward" and "leeward" to
| describe sides of the island sometimes, and will give you
| directions from local landmarks (Zippy's is a good one,
| everyone tends to know where those are, or they can see the
| orange sign easily) to other locations.
| roughly wrote:
| There was an article posted here not too long ago which
| talked about decoding an old Polynesian map, which the
| sailors used to navigate between islands in the pacific, and
| it turned out to be similarly situational - the map wasn't
| useful for telling objectively how far you were from one
| place to another, but it was very useful for navigating from
| one spot to another based on references to what you could
| see.
|
| I've mentioned it a few times around here, but James C
| Scott's Seeing Like A State* has a fascinating look at the
| way language changed to prefer "overview"-type ways of
| describing location/distance/etc, as opposed to these more
| situational/embodied measures & directions which were
| previously commonplace.
|
| * https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780300078152
| kelnos wrote:
| > _do not have words for "left" and "right" and instead use
| cardinal terms for everything. Speakers of such languages
| presumably then must know their orientation at all times._
|
| Huh, interesting. Do you know if they actually do know their
| orientation at all times, or is it just that "west" is always
| "left" and "east" is always "right", regardless of absolute
| orientation?
| jackbravo wrote:
| From my own experience I would guess they know their
| orientation at all times.
|
| In Guadalajara, Mexico, where I live. I've seen it first
| hand. People of certain age that lived near the center of the
| city use an absolute system for navigating the city, and to
| give directions on how to get to places with phrases like "up
| the river", "down the river", of an old river no longer
| existent that used to pass through the center of the city.
| And they always know which way goes to the center of the
| city, even when going outside the city center and to unknown
| neighborhoods. My father is one of such people.
| ehxor wrote:
| Other than the part where you'd have a battery strapped to you,
| this could be interesting to adapt to firefighting scenarios. If
| you could walk up to a structure and do a calibration so that
| instead of telling you which way North was it was calibrated to
| the direction of the face of the building (the "A-side" in most
| firefighting vocabs) then you could use the feedback from it when
| inside to know which side of the building you were facing despite
| being visually cut off and disoriented.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| I had this same idea when I was in university and built one in my
| embedded systems class. It was pretty cool to use when I was on
| my motorcycle.
|
| In addition to a north facing mode, I also added a location mode
| which would always point to a specified lat/lon location. This
| was cool for just randomly exploring while always knowing where
| home is.
| asdff wrote:
| I wonder what else you can trigger like this to get a sense of
| something? Like having it buzz when you are near a taco stand,
| maybe that would give you a sense for finding nearby tacos over
| time through some latent factors that are common between taco
| stands? Probably a more useful case than the taco stands would
| be having it buzz some time before it rains. Then you can
| really develop that sense of feeling weather come "through your
| bones."
| dools wrote:
| But can I reprogram it to sense sunshrooms?
| BeefWellington wrote:
| Along these lines is an audio compass app I came across when
| looking for good visually impaired navigation tools:
| https://staging.f-droid.org/en/packages/cz.harvie.northdog/
|
| Really basic concept but helpful for in-city navigation for
| someone without sight. The downside is it works by using both
| channels in a stereo headphone setup, which means you are dulling
| your audial sensitivity to the area around you.
|
| Something like this seems to be an even better concept in terms
| of addressing that.
|
| I also wonder if this could simply be added to existing
| smartwatches.
| ok_dad wrote:
| > dulling your audial sensitivity to the area around you
|
| Many headphones have a feature where they pass-thru the
| external audio, so perhaps you could use that with this as an
| audio overlay.
| asdff wrote:
| This is some serious technology. It's not trying to sell you some
| junk, its just pure hardware to affect a biological response. I
| wonder how long the effects last? How often do you need to be
| wearing this thing? What about your local environment, is it more
| difficult to maintain a sense of north in places without a
| uniform, cardinal direction based street grid, or some nearly
| constantly visible landmarks on the horizon for example? The sun
| alone can't be relied upon beyond just a general sense of vague
| north, since it changes its course throughout the year.
| vyrotek wrote:
| Cool idea. I wonder if you really need all 8 buzzers. This
| article has a version that just buzzes when you face north.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/06/first-hum...
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I made a belt that did this while I was in college. Some pics:
| https://imgur.com/a/FNbtdEO
| sparrish wrote:
| Much better design and you don't look like a criminal that has
| to wear a lo-jack.
| _Microft wrote:
| Great thing! If you want to revisit this project: you can get
| PCBs made with e.g. JLCPCB, PCBWay, OSHpark or others for a
| just a few dollars plus shipping now. That might help with the
| rats nest of cables that you had in that box.
| authpor wrote:
| wouldn't it be better to learn about where you are and how to
| find the north by looking at the sun?
|
| then again, this thing could greatly teach how to do this, as
| long as you stopped wearing it eventually
| elric wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Lepht Anonym at one point was working on an
| implantable version of this.
| dugmartin wrote:
| Or you could just follow your nose...
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6823284/
| kuboble wrote:
| In a sport of orienteering (quite popular in Scandinavia and
| Switzerland) having perfect sense of the North as opposed to
| checking it with compass would offer a competitive advantage.
|
| I wonder if anyone tried to develop that.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| This seems like it would be distracting when near any ferrous
| material? If you walk around the inside of a building with a
| magnetic compass, you would be surprised how often the needle
| deviates from North.
| amanj41 wrote:
| Can someone help me understand what it means to develop the sixth
| sense for north? Does it mean:
|
| a) The user must be wearing the anklet at all times to initially
| calibrate but their body is able to determine how much rotation /
| transposition they have undergone in order to point north. b)
| After training, one could tell which way is north without ever
| having to put on the anklet again
| kag0 wrote:
| It's A
|
| But once users spend a lot of time in an area wearing the
| device, they have a better ability to navigate that area even
| with the device removed. I imagine it's similar to how you
| would be able to navigate your home in low light
| loa_in_ wrote:
| Maybe not forever, without ever putting it on, but you got it
| right in general.
| ranger207 wrote:
| It's probably B. I have a fairly intuitive sense for north even
| without ever using this, although it does get confused
| sometimes. I've learned not to trust it coming out of the
| subway into tall buildings with narrow streets because more
| often than not I'll start heading a completely different
| direction than the way I wanted to go. I can see how this would
| help develop that sense, and I wonder if I'd have more success
| if I tried it
| lhnz wrote:
| I remember when the Apple Watch was first released, this is how I
| thought directions were going to be implemented. I was so
| disappointed when it turned out this wasn't the case.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Problem with a Watch is that, as your swing and twist your arm
| as you're walking or holding anything, its cardinal orientation
| can vary wildly.
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